In response to the problems encountered in improving the communications between people desiring rapid and efficient delivery of verbal messages in the business community, electronic message systems that store audio messages in a digital form have very recently been developed. These systems allow a caller to store the digital form of his message for later retrieval by the person he is directing the message to. Even though these systems greatly increase the efficiency of communication between parties, the need for even more versatility in communication ability still exists. For example, these voice storage systems that are available to a select group of callers such as the employees of a corporation may have many different branches connected to different systems. In order to increase the versatility of a particular system, it is necessary that they be able to communicate with each other through any means available. In order to accomplish this, the systems that desire to communicate with each other must coordinate their respective functions such as receiving or transmitting information over a common transmitting medium.
The simultaneous transmission and reception of voice information for intended recipients over a common transmitting medium can be a difficult task to accomplish for a machine. This is due to the fact that a great deal of information traffic is present along a common data link. One of the most commonly used means of communicating between two computer systems in a highspeed digital data link that utilizes techniques such as time sharing. These type of data links enable two computers to converse with one another if the proper connections are made. However, these data links are not always available to a computer and, as such, it is not always efficient to utilize this type of data link for transmitting digitized message data. Sometimes the data link is either busy or not available for system use. Therefore, there exists a need for establishing a communication link between two voice message systems with the requisite versatility that does not require the sole use of a digital data link.